The Curse of the Grand Guignol (5 page)

They covered the wall behind
him and he had the uneasy feeling they were looking over his
shoulder. He could see them reflected in the Venetian glass and was
tempted to throw some salt over his shoulder. But should he throw
it over his left or his right? Was it a wall of evil eyes or an
army of guardian angels?

“The first murder occurred
almost a month ago – the third day of November. A body was found
hanging from a lamp-post in the rue des Abbesses. Not hanging by
the neck, but strung up as if it was a marionette, the underarms
bound with string, the sort of string used for binding large
packages that one wishes to send through the post, quite common,
able to be purchased almost everywhere. The corpse looked bizarre
because the lips had been smeared with red lipstick and there were
red dots on the cheeks, the sort that clowns paint on their faces,
achieved using the same red lipstick. It was doubly bizarre because
the victim was an elderly man.”

“That comical contrivance
appears to be related to a circus rather than a theatre of horror,”
commented Dr Watson.

“Yes,” agreed the inspector,
“except the victim’s hands had been cut off.”

“Oh,” muttered the doctor.
“Nothing comedic about that, then.”

“No,” agreed the inspector
blandly, affecting an immobile expression to counter the
melodramatic fact. “The hands had been chopped off most likely
using a small hatchet after the victim had been stabbed through the
heart with a round spike of some sort. There was a pool of blood in
a nearby alleyway but hardly any under the lamp-post. The missing
hands were never found though we searched high and low. The dead
body did not immediately strike us as looking like a marionette –
merely a bizarre method of displaying a corpse.”

“The missing hands hint at some
sort of medieval retribution,” said the Countess, improvising an
opinion rather than asserting it. “It is a common punishment for
thieves in Arab countries, usually just the one hand, not
both.”

Of more than moderate
intelligence, the inspector noted the change of tone. It encouraged
him to elaborate. “Yes, we looked into that angle. Interestingly,
the victim was a prosperous glove maker with a glove factory
north-east of the city in Bobigny. The connection between the hands
and gloves seemed to point to something significant. We questioned
all his employees He appeared to be respected, even well-liked.
Everyone expressed dismay at his death. He had never married. His
closest friends expressed the utmost shock. His financial accounts
were scrutinized. He appeared scrupulous in all his dealings. We
could not find a single example of mismanagement or dishonesty. He
appeared to have not an enemy in the world. In other words, we came
to a dead end.”

“There was nothing to link him
to the theatre?” posed the Countess, returning to her first
thought, though not as insistently.

“We didn’t consider a
connection to anything theatrical at that stage. As I said, he did
not appear to look like a marionette even though he had been strung
up. It was only later, after the third murder mirroring the same
bizarre manner of death that we noticed how puppet-like the victims
appeared. At that stage, meaning after the third murder, we
immediately went back and interviewed everyone connected to the
three deceased. None of the victims had any link to the theatre
apart from attending on occasion an opera or dramatic play.”

The inspector paused and
swallowed hard. “There is just one thing I have omitted to add.
Each victim had a luggage tag strung around his or her neck. The
first victim had the word ‘mama’ written on his tag.”

“What did you make of that?”
asked the doctor, intrigued.

“Frankly, we did not know what
to make of it. It seemed more of a joke than anything serious. We
concluded the murderer was someone with a sick mind, a lunatic with
a hatred of his mother perhaps. We made enquiries and found there
were plenty of lunatics with a hatred of their mothers but none
with an obsession for red lipstick. I had men working day and night
going over old files to establish if any criminals had a connection
to red lipstick. As you are probably aware, Monsieur Francois
Vidocq kept a meticulous system of information cards detailing all
sorts of quirks associated with the criminals of France. Alas, no
connection came to light. Likewise, the first deceased could not be
linked to any madmen or asylums and his mother had been dead for
over twenty years. Monsieur Maurice Dupin, the first victim, had
led an uneventful - some might say boring - life as an honest
businessman and a confirmed bachelor.”

“And yet he died an eventful
death…more coffee, inspector?” invited the Countess.

“Yes, thank you.” His throat
was feeling unnaturally dry and he had only just started.

“Number two?’ she prompted,
filling his demitasse.

“Victim number two was a week
later – November tenth. He was found in the Bois de Vincennes by a
man walking his dog in the early hours of the morning. The body had
been strung up by the upper arms in the same manner as the first
victim, this time to a tree in the park. He had the same red lips
and clown cheeks. Around his neck was a luggage tag with the word:
‘papa’. By that, we knew at once it was the work of the same
killer.”

Dr Watson and the Countess
exchanged glances; both recalled the newspaper article describing
the body of a man found in the Bois de Vincennes, though not the
curious manner of his death.

“You suppressed some vital
details from the newspaper,” pressed the doctor, trying not to
sound too judgmental.

“Yes,” admitted the inspector,
draining his demitasse in one gulp. “The Director General of the
Sûreté Nationale applied pressure. I believe your newspapers
sometimes oblige in like manner to avoid public panic and copycat
killings?”

“Yes, yes,” muttered the
doctor, realizing now why the murders they had read about all
seemed nondescript and run-of-the-mill.

“Were the hands of the second
victim butchered?” furthered the Countess.

The inspector shook his head.
“No, this victim was missing his ears.”

“You mean they had been sliced
off?” she clarified. “Post mortem?”

“Yes, that’s precisely what I
mean.”

“Well, you definitely have a
madman on your hands,” concluded the doctor forthrightly. “Most
likely it is someone who has not
yet
been incarcerated in an
asylum but the man will slip up eventually and you will have your
lunatic. Do you think he is targeting particular individuals?”

The inspector nodded. “Yes, the
victims were all prosperous elderly citizens, people of good
standing. It would have been far easier to target vagrants or
streetwalkers. The panic would still have been significant, as with
your Jack the Ripper. And yet the killer pursued those from
respectable backgrounds. The choice of elderly victims is baffling.
How does he choose who to target? Does he lure them to the chosen
place of death? Or does he stalk them and then brazenly take his
chance? Or does he strike randomly and opportunistically?”

“You thoroughly checked the
background of the second victim?” pursued the Countess.

“Yes, Monsieur Louis LeBrun was
an art dealer. He lived in an
hotel particulier
overlooking
the park. He was married with three adult sons. The sons work in
banking, respectively in Bruges, Cologne and Geneva. My men
thoroughly checked the backgrounds and everyone came out with a
clean slate. The wife is an American heiress. No financial
skeletons in her closet either.”

“Did you check the backgrounds
of the other guests in the hotel?” asked the doctor.

The inspector looked
baffled.

The Countess came to the
rescue. “An
hotel particulier
is a Parisian mansion, similar
to Devonshire House, Montague House, Northumberland House,
etcetera, in London, the sort of thing a landed aristocrat retains
in the city. There are some magnificent ones in the Marais. The
Hotel de Sully and Hotel Carnavalet are quite palatial.” She turned
back to the inspector. “Was Monsieur LeBrun a man of letters?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“The ears being sliced off - it
made me wonder if there might be a link to libellous articles. It
was a common punishment meted out to writers in England in days
gone by. I am thinking specifically of Prynne who had both ears cut
off and the letters SL branded on his forehead after being
convicted of Scandalous Libel.”

The inspector rubbed his chin
thoughtfully. “I see.”

“What about the third murder?”
prompted the doctor; who was now as curious about the murders as
his female companion was.

“The third victim was a woman,
the only female so far. Madame Amelie Hertzinger.”

The name immediately rang a
bell in the doctor’s belfry. “We read about her death in the
newspaper. She fell from her balcony.”

“Oh, yes,” remembered the
Countess. “She was an ardent patroness of bohemian artists and her
death spawned a new movement – the Splattereurs.”

“Yes, quite,” responded the
inspector dryly, “but she did not exactly fall. She had been tied
to the balcony railings, her wrists bound using ribbons not string,
her torso and legs dangling over the side, once again strung up
like a marionette. The ribbons, however, were not as strong as the
string and when they gave way she fell onto the pavement. Her body
was discovered by the char who arrived at dawn to set the fires.
Madame Hertzinger lived alone apart from a cook and a parlourmaid
who have bedrooms at the rear of the sous-sol.”

“Was she alive when she fell?”
asked the Countess. “Did she scream for help?”

“Yes and no, she was alive but
her mouth was gagged using one of her own silk scarves. Her face
was quite a mess when we found her but it was clear her lips had
been smeared with lipstick and her cheeks dotted the same. Her hair
had been hacked off.”

“Her name sounds Jewish,”
observed the Countess.

“Yes, she was married to a Jew
but she was not a Jewess by birth and she had been widowed three
years.”

“The shearing of the hair
suggests a deliberate act of humiliation,” she continued.

“Yes,” agreed the inspector. “I
am aware it is a form of humiliation inflicted specifically on
women. The killer hacked off the hair while the victim was still
alive. He may have used the same hatchet that he used for the hands
of victim number one. Her scalp showed signs of horrific damage
that could not have resulted from the fall.”

“The hair was not found at the
scene?” pursued the doctor distastefully.

The inspector shook his head.
“No, same as for the hands and ears – none were to be found. We
think the killer may view these items as treasures or keepsakes to
remind him of each individual victim and each particular
murder.”

“What did the luggage label say
for Madame Hertzinger?” posed the Countess, nodding in agreement
that the killer was collecting trophies.

“Baba.”

“Ah, now we get to the Slavic
link,” she reasoned. “Baba is short for babusia – meaning
grandmother, or perhaps babushka, meaning handkerchief. It was
after the third murder that you thought there might be a Slavic
connection?”

“Not immediately, no, but when
we seemed to get nowhere with the usual lines of investigation we
began to look for less obvious clues. There was a gap of one week
between the first and second murders, and then a further week
before the third murder. It gave us time to go over things. I sent
the telegram not knowing if there would be another murder, not even
sure how you could help. I was just hoping that if you were passing
through Paris you might take a look and spot something we had
overlooked. After the fourth murder the Slavic connection seemed
more feasible. The luggage label for the fourth said: ‘tato’.”

“Tato?” repeated the doctor
quizzically.

The inspector indicated for the
Countess to explain.

“It is derived from the word
Tartar, meaning Mongol. When the Mongols led by Genghis Khan
conquered the Asian steppe they continued across the Ukrainian
steppe on their way to Europe but crashed straight into Kyiv. By
the time they were finished there was nothing left of the once
might city or the famous Golden Gate. The Russian princelings in
the north, in an effort to save themselves, did a deal with the
Mongols and agreed to extract taxes from their own defeated people
which they then passed on to the Mongols. The surviving population
was thus enslaved and in time came to regard their conquerors as
they would their fathers, in other words, as men who had complete
control over their lives. Tartar became tato, meaning father. The
word Tartary, Greek for the darkest pit of hell, also has links to
the time of the Mongol conquest.” The Countess turned to the
inspector. “The third death prompted you to send a telegram to
Biarritz?”

“Yes, the third murder with the
word ‘baba’ occurred on the seventeenth of November. It implied a
Slavic link but I had no time to follow it up, then after that
nasty business with the clairvoyants in Biarritz was cleared up so
promptly I returned to Paris and suddenly remembered you were
Ukrainian. I sent the telegram in the hope you might shed some
light on the string of murders. The fourth death with the word
‘tato’ occurred on the twenty-fourth and confirmed, for me at
least, that there must be a Slavic link. I am grateful you can
spare me some time.”

“Tell us about the fourth
murder,” said the Countess.

“The body of a man was
discovered in the Cimetiere du Calvaire – the smallest cemetery in
Paris. It is situated in Montmartre and adjoins the old church of
Saint Pierre de Montmartre. The corpse had the wrists tied with
string which were attached to a wooden crossbar flung loosely over
the headstone. The body was splayed out on a tomb. The man had been
stabbed with the same round spike as victim number one and two, but
not three. His eyes were missing, gouged out. My men searched
everywhere. The eyeballs were nowhere to be found. But the luggage
tag was also missing. It was found a short time later draped around
the neck of a stone archangel not more than ten feet from the
corpse. It was as if the killer was playing a game with us. He knew
we would be expecting a luggage tag. He wanted us to find it but he
wanted to toy with us first.”